nadera78

The man involved has form for this sort of behaviour, which gives an element of legitimacy to what is otherwise internet gossip. But he'll continue sucking on David Hughes' teat regardless.

On another forum some fans were discussing the possible reasons why they have not been receiving the few random emails the club bothers to send out. One of them asked the club directly and received a response from the commercial manager (who has hardly covered himself in glory previously) saying, effectively, "we've seen the comments you've made on social media and assumed you wouldn't be interested in renewing your season ticket". I was one of those wondering why club emails were no longer arriving in my inbox, not that I have any intention of returning. I guess I have my answer. Anyone expecting the club to perform some kind of outreach programme for lapsed fans (average attendance over 4,000 when Hughes took over, remember, so there are a lot of us) needs to look at the personnel involved and assess the likelihood of such an effort being undertaken.

I mean, we have set that situation up ourselves by making it so blindingly obvious that GB was just another name for England - hence Regan Grace being ignored so we could play English half backs on the wing. What is Knowles supposed to think as a consequence of that? He knows the only way to get on that GB tour is to play for England because Welsh players aren't going to be picked. As to Irish players appearing for GB, well that's a whole other issue - and one we continue to ignore.

Seeing as we're on the topic, the GB tour was supposed to return profits to the component nations, has anyone heard anything about how much has been distributed to the Welsh, Scots and Irish? Or, as expected, was the financial performance as bad as the physical?

In the entire history of our sport, GB never played a game in Wales. The resurrection of that brand was just old men doing old men things. Leave it in the past, where it belongs.

He's a good young player, Hodson. Got potential. Looking at the players definitely leaving/re-signing, it could optimistically be described as a mixed start for the new regime.

I thought it was more that Nigel Wood, as is usual for an accountant, saw a way to reduce RFL spending by removing/reducing the requirements. Fewer standards = fewer audits = fewer salaried employees needed. Similar to his refrain "we don't run the clubs, it's up to them" whenever a club got into trouble.

I haven't followed this closely but isn't this rumoured to be a sizeable reduction on the previous contract? And at the same time the financials of the renegotiated deal with Fox remain undisclosed.

Lovely try from the Dutch centre.

He might want to talk to the Jamaican RL about that. They've been pretty clear that they are working to develop the game in their own country and, whilst it would be great to see other Caribbean nations playing the game, they're not interested in a West Indies team. I've been getting the feeling that the Jamaican team has become much more influenced from northern England since the RLWC Qualifiers. No doubt that's partially due to the pandemic preventing the domestic players travelling to play games for two years, but it also coincides with Jason Robinson and Alex Simmons becoming involved. Need to be careful about that, we saw with Ireland a couple of years back that the English-based players got a little too controlling of the national team.

1. £24? That's not even a round of drinks 2. Every sport I've ever played requires a similar fee, I'm amazed RL's never done this before

We don't actually need French TV to be interested in showing games played in England to generate additional income, depending on our negotiating skills. If a French Co wanted to show the 26 Catalans/Toulouse home games, and paid for the broadcast costs, SL could retain the UK rights to them and then on-sell those games to Sky. At £100,000 a pop (far less than Sky pay for each SL game they currently show), that's £2.6m new income - more or less the central funding the two French clubs will receive. If Sky don't want a weekly Saturday evening game for that price (which is cheap for live sport) then offer them elsewhere, and if no-one takes them then go down the OurLeague route for a couple of quid per game. We can generate money from this, even if the French broadcaster just pays the costs and not a fee.

Like I say, perfect for England. GB's never coming back again anyway.

First thing I do upon taking Ralph's job is bring this back. It's a beauty. IIRC it was on the shirt sleeve of every club in the early 90s when I first started watching RL.

I'm not the first person to say this by any stretch, but we really should have just made that red and used it for England.

You're right it is appalling. I've never been a referee but I coached youth sports for 15 years and saw some abysmal behaviour from coaches and parents.. Even had to intervene a couple of times to support the ref. Governing bodies in all sports need to do an awful lot more to support the men and women who make competitive community sport possible.

After 27 years, chief, I've washed my hands of it. As I said to you previously, it's your club now.

The speed, and authority, with which you moved from "moving to Plough Lane is going to be brilliant" to "well, it's up to the Broncos but it might work" is quite something.

Load of rubbish, as usual.

Just reading around this, the KSDL (owned 40/40/20 split) had no money coming in for 18 months and needs to pay out approximately £10m for repairs in coming years which it can't afford. So the stadium ownership is going to be placed into a community trust, and a licence to run the stadium awarded to the football club. The Giants will then become tenants of the football club. Is that correct? Because we've seen elsewhere what happens when RL clubs find themselves in this situation, and it isn't good news.

We play too many club games as it is and, as a result, can't seem to find any space for internationals. Why would we react to that by re-introducing a parochial fixture that excludes most of the country and has been tried and failed several times previously? Even worse, is to do this at a time when the game outside the heartlands feels like it is in serious peril.

Pennine League, surely?

We have few financial resources as it is, and they're about to be reduced substantially. In that context, spreading them over 20 clubs instead of 12 is insane. We are actively choosing to make our elite competition poorer.

Exactly right. I'd be amazed if the best young players - the likes of Leyland, Horsman, Hodgson - stick around next season. If you're a SL club why would you not offer them a contract? They've got ability (Leyland for eg played for Lancashire alongside Pearce-Paul) they just need time and a good structure to develop. And in future years the best academy graduates won't ever play for the first team, they'll go north as soon as they're 18. That leaves the Broncos and Skolars fighting over the players who are; not good enough for SL, prepared to play PT, and not interested in playing union. That's a tiny group of people, not enough for one club never mind two. The monkey running the Broncos thinks the club can copy Fev, Fax, etc by going PT (although I'm willing to bet he'll still be FT) which completely ignores the inbuilt advantages those clubs have being based in the heartlands.

For perhaps a decade now every change the sport has made has been focussed on the clubs at the bottom of SL and the top of the Championship. This is just a continuation of that, and it's utterly ludicrous.